Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of the dirt.

We agreed with him in principal - we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.

If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.